At its 30th meeting, in London in June 1978, the International Whaling Commission began to stumble towards its end as a useful regulator of the whale stocks of the world. In classic Parkinsonian style, it has acquired a full-time secretariat and new offices just at the point when, after thirty years' neglect of its duty to conserve the whale stocks of the world, it has almost no function left. Only the sperm whale stocks remain as anything like the basis of a prosperous whaling industry. Small-scale local coastal whale fisheries will no doubt continue for some years; being less efficient, they take longer to exterminate the stocks on which they depend for their livelihood.